Friday, June 26, 2009

Dr. Honghai Liu, one of the two researchers heading up a project to craft an exceptionally deft robotic hand, has called such a device "one of the holy grails of science," and honestly, we can't say we disagree. He, along with Professor Xiangyang Zhu, was recently award a Royal Society grant to further research the possibility of using artificial intelligence to create software that could "learn and copy human hand movements." A sensor-laden cyberglove has been used to capture data about how the human hand moves, and the duo hopes to eventually use the findings to produce the "perfect artificial limb." Of course, there's no telling how long it'll take for such technology to actually be perfected, but we can already see the line forming with folks eager to swap out their own hand for one a bit more adept.